Both the supporters and the opponents
of a Tel Aviv conference are getting ready for the IARPP 2018 conference in
NYC. All have been invited to an open discussion on Israel-Palestine.

A Palestinian shows his ID to security officer at an Israeli checkpoint, May 2018. Luay Sababa//Press Association. All rights reserved.Turmoil has erupted in the
International Association of Relational Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
(IARPP), following the board’s decision to hold its 2019 annual meeting in Tel
Aviv, Israel, as some members charged the organization of discriminatory
practices, in violation of its own principles.

IARPP is one of the fastest growing
psychotherapy organizations in the world, famed for its commitment to social justice
and a style of clinical work that recognizes the patient as a co-creator of the
psychoanalytic work along with the analyst. Most IARPP members reside and
practice in the US. The Israeli chapter is the organization’s second
largest.

“It is unreasonable to hold an
international professional conference in a country where it will not be
accessible to some of the professionals interested in attending it, on grounds
such as the clinician’s’ ethnicity or political opinions,” an Israeli IARPP
member said, under condition of remaining anonymous. “Palestinian clinicians
residing in the West Bank and Gaza are highly unlikely to receive permits to
enter Israel at this time, and even the process of applying for these permits
is so degrading, that it is illegitimate for IARPP to subject the Palestinian
attendees to this ordeal.”

Although the 2019 conference location
became a matter of fierce controversy among both the leadership and the rank
members of this 2000-member organization, the Board has refused to reconsider
the venue of its 2019 conference, a response which is the only formal reply
that IARPP has made to the issue. The Board then closed down debate on the
question on the IARPP internet discussion forum after 24 hours. Some of the
dissenting members reported strong pressures to keep quiet, including verbal
assaults, threats, and character assassinations on multiple professional
mailing lists.

In response to the organization’s
disregard for member concerns, a number of IARPP members have cancelled their
lectures at the upcoming 2018 conference in NYC (one whole panel, on the
subject of Israel-Palestine, has been cancelled), left the Tel Aviv conference
organizing group or left IARPP altogether, while others have called for a
boycott of both conferences.

“I simply could not in good
conscience remain with IARPP when there is such disregard for Israel’s
occupation, daily atrocities against my people, like the recent massacres in
Gaza, and violations of international law and human rights,” said a Palestinian
psychotherapist practicing in NYC who recently left IARPP.

The upheaval did not end with the
organization membership however. Over 1300 mental health professionals,
academics and activists from across the world, including Israel and the West
Bank, have signed three different petitions and statements urging IARPP’s board
to reconsider the conference location. The petition that received the largest
number of signatures was initiated by the US-based activist group called USA-Palestine
Mental Health Network, in conjunction with Dr. Samah Jabr, the Palestinian
activist psychiatrist who oversees all mental health services in the West
Bank. Renowned feminist philosopher Judith Butler is among the
signatories. Another petition was drawn
up by the members of the Israeli group Psychoactive – Mental Health
Professionals for Human Rights. The 34 signatories of this petition (11 of them
IARPP members) argued that “holding an event of this nature in Tel Aviv implies
a political position that accepts the Israeli Occupation as a reality with
which we/people can live”, pointing out that “the Israeli establishment
traditionally sees such events as expressions of acceptance of Israel’s policy
and the fierce debate in the IARPP network also attests to the political and
ideological significance that is ascribed to the conference location”.

The dissenting Israeli professionals
added that according to Israel’s own laws, international professionals who
actively resist the Israeli Occupation are also unlikely to be allowed into
Israel, hinting at the recent law blacklisting members of some 20 human rights
defender organizations – including the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Quakers
organization American Friends Service Committee and Jewish Voice for Peace –
and banning them from entering the country.

Most astonishingly perhaps, given the
personal and professional risks they could face in the current social climate
as a result of such action, 24 Palestinian mental health professionals who are
citizens of Israel organized their own petition, protesting the choice of the
conference location and asking IARPP to move the event to Cyprus or Jordan so
that their Palestinian colleagues from the West Bank and Gaza could attend. “We
have been exposed to the key relational concepts, such as intersubjectivity and
mutual recognition, and appreciate the way that the relational theory and
practice make room for thinking about the mental health impacts of social and
political conditions. In this light, we were surprised to discover that IARPP
chose to hold its international conference in Israel, despite its longstanding
history of human rights abuses, notably the violent occupation of the West Bank
and the blockade of Gaza. In our minds, not taking these ongoing assaults on
Palestinian lives and human rights into account when choosing the conference
location could be translated as their quiet acceptance by IARPP”, the
letter reads.

The Palestinian signatories asserted
that their colleagues in the occupied and besieged territories “have a right to
resist”, and expressed hope that “the IARPP Board will take our appeal
seriously and make an ethical choice to side with the oppressed”. The board
members of the Arab Psychologists’ Association, representing most Arab mental
health professionals in Israel, are among the signatories.

IARPP’s board maintains that the organization
does not choose its conference locations based on political considerations, but
rather holds conferences in countries that boast thriving IARPP chapters – and
Israel has one. The board has also pledged to organize a tour in the West Bank
(at present, the tour being organized looks more like a tour of Jerusalem…
whether East or West Jerusalem, remains to be seen), and to try applying for
permits for Palestinian mental health workers to attend. It has been brought to
IARPP’s attention that such permits are unlikely to be issued and that even if
they are, most Palestinian mental health professionals are unlikely to choose
to attend, given the popularity of the academic boycott in general and
prominent Palestinian professionals’ positions regarding the IARPP conference
more specifically.

To date, multiple media items
covering the conflict have been published, including the piece by Dr.
Alice Rothchild in Mondoweiss and its Hebrew translation,
which appeared on the Israeli professional psychology website Psikhologiya
Ivrit, and articles by Dr. Samah Jabr in Middle East Monitor. In an article
provocatively titled A Monologue with the “Other”, Jabrquestioned
IARPP’s ability to hold a safe space for Palestinians in their own home, while
accommodating for Israel’s policies of military occupation and siege. “The
IARPP is losing a unique opportunity to respond to the voices that ask for a
genuinely safe space for Palestinians and their supporters,” she responds “Treating
Israel like any other controversial government, ignores the impact of the
occupation on the possible participation in the conference itself by Palestinians
and others. Placing the convenience of the conference for Israeli participants
over the rights of clinicians elsewhere to have fair access to it.”

At this moment, both the supporters
and the opponents of the Tel Aviv conference are getting ready for the IARPP
2018 conference in NYC. The steering committee of the USA-Palestine Mental
Health Network organized an event, Voices on Palestine, which will
be held at the same venue – the Roosevelt Hotel in Manhattan – where the
conference is taking place. The event, which is scheduled to take place
concurrently with the IARPP conference but without overlapping with any of its
proceedings, will start with a panel of speakers, to be followed by an open
discussion on Israel-Palestine. All the attendees of the conference have been
invited to participate, including the IARPP board members, each of whom has
received a friendly personal invitation. IARPP did not reply to the
invitations, but weeks after signing a contract with the Roosevelt Hotel, one
of the organizers of Voices on Palestinereceived
a phone call from the hotel administration, notifying her that the event
could not be held at Roosevelt, because IARPP feared conference disruptions
and… had hired a private security company to protect the conference from the
event organizers!

The hotel representatives further
noted that they became so alarmed upon learning about the IARPP board’s fears
that they additionally arranged that the NYC Police would also be present to
help safeguard the conference. Eventually, the activist was able to convince
the hotel administration that she was an IARPP member herself and that the
event she and her colleagues were planning was meant to be a peaceful
discussion and not a security threat of any kind.

It will be interesting to see what
will actually happen at the NYC conference. While some of the protesters are
still hopeful that IARPP will listen and that the New York and Tel Aviv
conferences will allow for honest political discussion, others are deeply
disenchanted and alarmed by the way in which this heretofore progressive
professional organization is enacting what seems like a strong identification
with the right-wing government of Israel – representing political dissent as a
security threat, and not ruling out any means of “self-defense” in the face of
this “threat”.

About the author

Ruchama Marton is a
psychiatrist and
psychotherapist, and a founding member of Israeli Physicians for Human Rights, as
well as a member of Psychoactive - Mental Health Professionals for Human Rights.

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